Well, not all Perl scripts/programs are run as CGI applications. Almost none of mine are. Where I work, almost all scripts are run from the command-line or some batch system, not from the Web. And I'll wager Perl still has more non-Web applications than Web applications. (No, I have no data to back this statement, except my distorted viewpoint. But I'm claiming Perl is general-purpose, while others claim it's special-purpose; I'd say the burden of proof is on Them.)

How's a poor perl6 interpreter to know if it should "autoenable taint" for all my programs? It cannot miraculously guess it's running as a CGI program, because that would force perl6 to know about one particular (if common) setup. Not only would that leave many holes, but these holes would also be more dangerous -- due to the illusion of security generated.

Should perl6 run in taint mode for all programs, except if explicitly disabled? This would mean Perl becomes a language which doesn't trust any input. It means I have to flag a whole class of scripts with "no, it's not a CGI script". This is wholly unlike warnings and strict: whereas use warnings and use strict are universally good ideas (except for a few places where they're not so hot), taint is useful only for programs with input that is less trusted than their execute permission bits.

I don't want to have to begin every Perl6 program of mine with

#!/usr/local/bin/perl6
no taint; # Don't pretend I don't know how
# to run a program
no CGI; # Don't parse CGI parameters
no Application::Web; # Don't overload open to open URLs
no GUI::Tk; # Don't do "new Tk::MainWindow"
no GUI::Any; # Don't wrap my script in an event
# loop.
no DBI; # Don't automatically connect to
# a database
no Pod::Any; # Don't print a blank line before
# and after every line beginning "="
no HTML; # Don't switch regexp syntax
no Net; # Don't set $|=1
#use strict; # Unneeded in Perl6! Yippee!
#use warnings; # - ditto -

When putting a smiley right before a closing parenthesis, do you:

Use two parentheses: (Like this: :) )
Use one parenthesis: (Like this: :)
Reverse direction of the smiley: (Like this: (: )
Use angle/square brackets instead of parentheses
Use C-style commenting to set the smiley off from the closing parenthesis
Make the smiley a dunce: (:>
I disapprove of emoticons
Other